The Sunday Papers

Sundays are for trying to fill several pairs of enormous shoes and shuffling around awkwardly in them while I get my bearings. Before I start wobbling at the lip of the top stair and have a near death experience prior to grabbing the railing, let’s read this week’s best writing about games (and game related things).

Over at Cohost, Harper Jay wrote about how Dragon’s Dogma 2’s friction puts it odds with the sort of design priorities you’d normally expect from a big release in 2024. “Gaming culture, fed the lie of mastery and player importance, does not understand that scars can be beautiful,” writes Jay.

“The core of Dragon's Dogma, the very defining characteristics that earned it cult status, are the same things that have caused these modern tensions. It is both a franchise utterly consistent in its design priorities and entirely out of touch with the modern audience. Dragon's Dogma 2 has come into prominence during a time where imaginative interpretation of mechanics is at an all time low and calls for "consumer" gratification are taken as truisms. It is a game entirely at odds with the YouTube ecosystem and the very things that give it allure are the tools that have turned it into a debated object.”

It’s a great piece that reminds me a little of another I read ages ago by Lana Polansky called “Against Flow.” It appears to have vanished from the net, but there's an excerpt here.

For Polygon, Julia Lee wrote about how she had to cancel a radioactive Neopet. It’s the sort of weird, old, more interesting internet style writing about a weird, old, more interesting internet throwback that I wholeheartedly support.

The absurdity of this cosmetic’s existence is funny enough; to understand why, you need to know that before the term “cancelled” was popularized into what it is now, March 3 was always a “cancelled” holiday in Neopets. The news page would read, “March 3 has been cancelled due to lack of interest,” and it’s been a reoccurring bit. This cosmetic was launched as part of this holiday, not to explicitly gain the ability to turn your Neopet into the likes of a racist YouTuber. Still, in my brain, this Neopet is looking like a sad YouTuber apologizing for accepting a scam company sponsorship.

For some related further reading: Neopets are planning a back-to-basics comeback, as described by the current team interviewed on Inverse.

Perry Gottschalk’s piece for Unwinnable is a beautiful reflection on being open to new experiences and “unreplicable” gaming moments; the place where real-life happenstance and games intersect to create unique experiences,

This is the space that Fumito Ueda puts us in through design by subtraction. To let go and experience.

Perhaps then, my conflict in recommending this game partially comes from knowing that this moment is unreplicable. The odds of someone’s controller dying at that exact moment is unlikely – they will never be able to feel the same thing I felt while playing. Hell, I can never play this game again myself. I would shatter this precious moment by knowing how this sequence could actually play out.

For his My Perfect Console pod, Simon Parkin spoke to infamous lawyer, “anti-videogames activist”, and unpaid Rockstar marketing department whizz Jack Thompson. If you’re wondering if he at all regrets his overzealous crusading, he told Parkin last year by email: “I was right and I would do it all over again.”

Music this week is a lovely set of videogame-infused breaks by Pizza Hotline at Bloop Radio London, notably this mix of certified Donkey Kong Country classic Aquatic Ambience. If you’ve enjoyed any of my writing in the past year, you have Mr. Hotline to thank for providing me with a permanent fixture in my work playlist with album Level Select. It’s roughly the sonic equivalent of sticking a dreamcast fishing controller in your left ear and pouring a cold brewed coffee into your right. Thank you, Pizza Man, and thank you, readers. Have a great weekend!